Lovestagram is coming to town

Instagram co-founder Mike Krieger is about to receive one of the Internet’s most thoughtful Valentine’s Day ecards from his girlfriend Kaitlyn Trigger.

Trigger, who has been dating Krieger since before he launched the hugely popular iOS app, is launching Lovestagram, an interactive Valentine’s card maker that uses the Instagram API, as a Valentine’s Day gift.

Lovestagram creates a slideshow of all Instagram photos shared between you and your special someone, through mutual username tags, photos shot in the same location within an hour or comments exchanged. All you do is sign in through your Instagram account and enter the username of your significant other. Two of the frames place your photos in a still frame you can click through and one places all photos in one frame.

The app works with anyone, no matter your relationship status, though at least for now, all of the frames are love-themed. Trigger says she may expand Lovestagram to create holiday, birthday or anniversary cards in the future.

“It basically lets you look through your relationship in photos,” Trigger told. 

To prepare the ecard maker, Trigger began studying code in Fall 2011. While she wanted to keep her project hidden from Krieger, she realized asking her coding-pro boyfriend to help her with bugs was much easier than solving them herself. Over the past few months, she taught herself Python, Django, Jinja, HTML, CSS, jQuery and Photoshop.

“Mike was really delighted when he realized I was learning code and I had to fend him off a little,” Trigger says. “I really did want to build this myself.”

Though Krieger knows his girlfriend has a big project in the works, he supposedly has no idea exactly what the site is and when it will launch.

Instagram has become something of a cult app, with spin-off products such as iPhone cases and
canvas wall hangings, and a London art gallery even showcased an exhibit of photos manipulated through the app.